Assess Independent Reading with a Cloze Activity
Wednesday, December 14th, 2011

Cloze is short for closure. So a cloze activity can bring closure to a reading assignment by assessing how well students understood a passage after reading independently. During a cloze activity, students complete a fill-in-the-blank summary of the passage WITHOUT looking back at the original text. [read more...]

Fall Party Includes Idiom Costumes
Tuesday, November 15th, 2011

While teaching the differences between literal and figurative language, South Creek Elementary Nadine Gilkison (Indianapolis, IN) had her fourth graders dress up in idiom costumes for their Fall Party at the end of October. [read more...]

More Than Happy, Sad, Mad
Friday, April 16th, 2010

Inferencing a character’s feelings or personality traits is complicated. It involves looking beyond the words. It takes time to build this skill in young readers. Making it tangible can help. One way to make it more concrete is to put a face to it. Here are three activities, all of which will [read more...]

Picture Books Build Background Knowledge
Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

Most picture books (also known as “children’s literature”) are usually 32 pages or less with illustrations on every page or double-page spread. At first glance, most middle school and high school teachers would walk past them assuming picture books to be for an [read more...]

Using Picture Books to Build Background Knowledge
Monday, October 27th, 2008

To first excite students about a new topic of study and also give them some initial information, check out your elementary school media center or local library. Picture books can become a supplemental reading resource to the traditional textbook. [read more...]

Using Author Clues to Build Inferences
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

One way to build students' ability to make inferences in their reading is by helping them identify and collect key words, phrases, and quotes from the reading text. Use these words to identify the details authors use to reveal a mood, idea, or action. [read more...]

Pre-Reading Strategies that Motivate
Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008

Teachers frequently ask for ways to motivate kids to want to read. After all, it’s pretty hard to work on students’ reading comprehension if they didn’t do the reading. With that said, here are two of my favorite pre-reading strategies to motivate kids to dive [read more...]